“Internal communication is an enabling function – it makes your organisation work. You can see it as the oil that helps smooth the running of your organisation or a bridge that creates links between people and functions. Either way, good IC creates understanding and helps knowledge sharing – and that can only be a great thing.” Institute of Internal Communications.
Internal communications can often be overlooked or not given much of a priority in an organisation. I have recently finished a project for one of my clients (who quite rightly recognise the importance of good internal comms within a large organisation) where I have been putting together their staff newspaper. This is the third time I have done this project for them and it has quickly become one of my favourite jobs.
It involves a lot of co-ordinating and setting of deadlines to get everything completed on time, which can be stressful. I manage everything from interviewing staff to photography. I get to talk to lots of different people and find out more about their jobs, in one issue I even spent the day on the road with one of their sales guys to get an insight into his typical day – as it turned out it wasn’t so typical but made for great reading. These jobs are enlightening and I have learned so much from the different experiences and interactions. It has really opened my eyes to the true organisation culture and I hope my writing has given people a peak at some of their colleague’s days, lives, projects and routines.
Writing internal comms is a different experience, your tone relaxes and immediately becomes more conversational – you get to focus less on the issues and more on the person behind them – it feeds my curiosity of finding out what people are thinking and what motivates. It’s also interesting to find out how different members in the same team view challenges and opportunities.
I am definitely looking forward to working on more of these projects in the future….
